Tag Archives: free ride

A report by the New America Foundation, The Out of State Student Arms Race, is the subject of another post on this site, How Much Should Public Universities Spend on Merit Aid? Although we have some disagreements with the New America report, it contains interesting arguments against the excessive use of non-need-based aid by public universities along with a list of those universities that provide the highest percentages of non-need-based aid to incoming freshmen.

The report would find full agreement from this quarter if it had been produced at a time past, when public universities received most of their funding from state appropriations and could maintain lower tuition rates for all. Now, unfortunately, many public institutions are forced to use merit aid more “strategically,” sometimes as part of the recruitment of out-of-state students and the greater revenue they bring, even after merit funding. To the extent that this use of merit aid works to deny access to merit-worthy, low-income applicants in-state, we do agree with the New America Foundation.

(Please note that separate posts discuss National Merit Scholarship aid, by institution. This post address the availability of all types of merit aid.)

In any event, the list below should be helpful to some parents with FAFSA income levels that are relatively high but that may still be stretched to the limit without non-need-based aid. We are not listing all the public universities on the list, but most of the larger ones are listed. After the university name, we will list the percentage of freshmen receiving non-need-based aid, followed by the average dollar amount of that aid per student. Most of the data is from 2013-2014. Schools where at least 20% of freshmen receive at least $4,000 in average merit aid are listed in bold.

Public universities below with the highest average per capita merit aid are UT Dallas ($13,766); Alabama ($11,919); Colorado ($9,497); Vermont ($9,283); Arizona ($8,137); Alabama Birmingham ($8,020); and New Hampshire ($8,020). Please note that some schools may sponsor very high numbers of National Merit Scholars (e.g., Oklahoma), but not provide as much merit aid in other forms. Still other schools (Alabama) fund both NMS aid and other merit aid at generous levels. And then there are the public elites that fund little or no aid that is not need-based.